Gerry Adams, Irish Republican Leader, to Step Down From Sinn Fein

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In announcing that he would leave the helm of Sinn Fein, Gerry Adams told party members in Dublin on Saturday, “I have complete confidence in the next generation of leaders.”CreditClodagh Kilcoyne/Reuters

By Reuters

Nov. 18, 2017

DUBLIN — Gerry Adams, a pivotal figure in the political life of Ireland for almost 50 years, said Saturday that he would step down as leader of Sinn Fein, the main Irish Republican party, after more than three decades.

Reviled by many as the face of the Irish Republican Army during its campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland, Mr. Adams reinvented himself as a peacemaker in the troubled region and then as a populist opposition member of the Irish Parliament.

At a packed party conference in Dublin, Mr. Adams said that he would be replaced as its president at its next annual gathering and that he would not run for re-election to Parliament.

“Leadership means knowing when it is time for change,” he said in an emotional speech. “That time is now.”

Mr. Adams stayed on stage as the 2,500-strong crowd, some in tears, gave him a standing ovation and sang a traditional Irish song about the road home.

Mr. Adams will almost certainly be succeeded by someone with no direct involvement in the decades of conflict in Northern Ireland, a prospect that would make Sinn Fein a more palatable coalition partner in the Irish Republic, where it has never been in power.

Sinn Fein’s deputy leader, Mary Lou McDonald, an English literature graduate from Trinity College Dublin who has been at the forefront of a new breed of politicians transforming the party’s image, is the clear favorite to take over.

Mr. Adams, 69, has always denied being a member of the I.R.A., but accusations from former fighters that he was involved in its campaign of killings have dogged him throughout his career.

Mr. Adams was a central figure in the republican nationalist movement throughout the three decades of violence between Catholic militants seeking a united Ireland, mainly Protestant militants who wanted to maintain Northern Ireland’s position as a part of Britain, and the British Army.

About 3,600 people died in the conflict, many at the hands of the I.R.A.

As head of the political wing of the group during its bombing campaigns in 1980s Britain, Mr. Adams was a pariah, banned from speaking on British airwaves. Television stations instead dubbed his voice with that of an actor.

He and his party emerged from the political cold in October 1997 when he shook hands with Prime Minister Tony Blair, the British leader then, at their first meeting. A year later, he helped win skeptical elements in the I.R.A. to support the Good Friday peace deal, which largely ended the violence.

Since then Sinn Fein has evolved from a fringe party into the dominant Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland and the third-largest party to the south in the Irish Republic.

Even so, suspicion of Sinn Fein’s role in the Troubles in Northern Ireland still runs deep. Analysts say a change of leadership could help open the way to Sinn Fein’s entering government in Dublin for the first time.

"Under a new Sinn Fein leader I think anything is possible,” said David Farrell, a professor of politics at University College Dublin.